252 



Dr. W. M. Haffkine. 



June 8, 1899. 



The LORD LISTEE, F.R.C.S., D.C.L., President, in the Chair. 



Meeting for Discussion. 



Subject : — Preventive Inoculation. 



Professor William Osier (elected 1898) was admitted into the 

 Society. 



Mr. Henry J. H. Fenton, Dr. Henry Head, Professor Conwy Lloyd 

 Morgan, Mr. Clement Reid, Professor H. S. Hele-Shaw, Dr. Ernest 

 Henry Starling, Professor Henry W. Lloyd Tanner, and Professor 

 B. C. Allen Windle, were admitted into the Society. 



A List of the Presents received was laid on the table, and thanks 

 ordered for them. 



The Discussion was opened with the following communication : — 



" On Preventive Inoculation."* By W. M. Haffkixe, CLE. 

 Communicated by Lord Lister, P.R.S. Received June 5, 

 —Read June 8, 1899. 



My Lord and Gentlemen, — The most important modern methods of 

 prophylactic treatment are based upon the fact that an attack of 

 disease from which an individual recovers leaves in him a condition of 

 relative immunity to another attack. 



The method of turning this result to advantage for the protection 

 of whole communities was first demonstrated to us by Mahomedan c - 

 physicians, to whom the world thus owes what proved to be one of the 

 most fertile principles of modern science. 



The successes of Jenner and Pasteur, who utilised cultivated virus 

 for preventive treatment, have led to a general conception that there is 

 the possibility of creating artificial immunity to diseases by treating 

 the organism with morbid virus rendered by some special means 

 harmless. 



This view involves a generalisation which led to a considerable 



* The paper as published here, after final revision by the author, differs in some 

 details from what had appeared in the ' Lancet ' of .Tune 24, and 1 British Medical 

 Journal,' of July 1, 1899, under the title of " A Discourse on Preventive Inocula- * 

 tion, delivered at the Koyal Society, London, on June 8, 1899." 



